A Healthy Competitive Spirit {And a $100 Giveaway}

My husband has three siblings and two parents, all of whom really enjoy card and board games. They all play bridge and cribbage and this thing called Hand and Foot which is not a disease but a complicated card game you play with, like, eight different decks and points and a teammate. I’m less of a game lover. I play cribbage, badly, because my husband forced me to learn. I like Monopoly for the first hour or so and then get so bored I stop bothering to do math and just throw all my money at whoever has the most hotels.

I like playing video games as a family; Wii is fun, it gets us on our feet, and I’m pretty good at it. And I’ve learned to play Hand and Foot, even if I have to keep the cheat sheet in my lap. I feel like my game-playing skills have improved admirably and I should get points for effort. But when it comes to WINNING, E has no mercy.

To pass the time while I was in labor with our first child, E talked me into a few rounds of cribbage. He beat me every time. He couldn’t even let his wife who was literally in the middle of birthing his heir and namesake win a round of cards. Now we don’t play together as much as side by side (Candy Crush, anyone?) and he STILL gloats ridiculously when he beats my scores.

A few years ago, game shows came back as the big thing on network television. It was a good compromise for E’s healthy competitive spirit and my dislike of being soundly trounced at every game. We could watch OTHER people fail compete and neither of us went to bed grumpy.

The first time E and I watched Minute to Win It on TV, the show wasn’t even over before we’d gotten a beer bottle and a deck of cards to try playing at home. The game was simple: set the stack of 52 cards on top of the empty bottle and blowing the cards off, a few at a time, leaving just ONE card on top. It looked so easy! How come these idiots on TV couldn’t do it?! Jeeze, if that’s all it takes to win a game show these days, sign me right up, Imma be rich!

We never won. Not even once. Go try it, it’s way, way harder than it looks. And that right there pretty much sums up Minute to Win It. It should be their motto: This is way harder than it looks. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth checking out – and now you can, because Minute To Win It is back this summer on Game Show Network (GSN).

They got Apolo Anton Ohno to host, which makes sense since he’s one of the most decorated American athletes of all time. And not so hard on the eyes either, am I right? We got a special sneak peek of the show this week along with a list of challenges. The idea is they can almost all be practiced at home with stuff you have laying around…so of course we had to give it a try too.

There are various difficulty levels, and I figured we’d be pretty safe at Level 1. The challenge: stack 6 soda cans on a plate floating in a bowl of water. You’ve got one Minute to Win It. GO!
Here’s proof he eventually did do it, even if it miiiiight not have been for the 3 seconds required: And it wouldn’t be fair to post that without sharing my attempt, as unsuccessful as it was. GO!
The gingers wanted to give it a try too. GO! (Please note, I know my child is actually 4, not 3, even though I said he is 3.)

Teamwork!

Caroline looks like that because she’s Super Kitty Caroline. Obviously.

Since that game was a big failure, I picked a level 2 game I thought might be a little more E’s speed. I mean, it involves wine glasses, and he’s definitely experienced with wine. The goal: spin a marble in an upside-down wine glass to carry it across the room and drop it into a bowl. E’s got one Minute to Win It. GO!
If we ever get called to be on the show, I’m just going to cross all my crossables that E gets that game. $250,000, here we come! Every. Second. Counts. A new season of Minute to Win It premieres Tuesday, June 25th at 8/7c on GSN. For more information, connect with Minute to Win It on Facebook and Twitter and visit the GSN website.

And to celebrate the return, Minute to Win It wants to give one lucky reader a $100 Gift Card. To enter, leave a comment on this post telling me about your competitive spirit. Are you cut-throat, like my husband? Or more its-all-in-good-fun?
Sweepstakes Rules: No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods: Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry. This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winner will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 6/18/13 – 7/17/13.

173 Responses to “A Healthy Competitive Spirit {And a $100 Giveaway}”

I suppose I am half and half. I can’t really get myself worked up about the results of beer league softball games but I would sacrifice a pinky joint to beat Bruce at Scrabble. In college I was known for trash talking and thrashing my opponents at Tetris.

I loooooooooooove playing games but I’m horrible and generally lose and that’s ok. So I guess I’m not competitive at all, hah! We play a LOT of board games in our house hold, so i have a LOT of practice losing. :)

First I love this post. LOVE IT. The videos of you all are awesome and fun and make me laugh. Second I’m totally trying a few of those. And third: we are board game people so we get competitive about chess and scrabble and such. I whipped his butt at Scrabble with a 100 point lead last week…he was so cranky after that. *snicker*

I am very competitive…. I used to play scrabble in Spanish with friends who are native speakers… at first they let me use a dictionary because I am not fluent, but after I started to trounce them on a regular basis- they took it away. Still won sometimes.

I am very competitive, our games nights are always very loud, and win big or Go Home nights. Plus being the mother of 4 boys doesn’t help, it seems they are always competing with each other in one way or another. Plus I do believe Competitiveness is a family trait, I’m E’s Cousin.

It’s so much fun watching you guys play. I used to be really competitive…after having kids, I learn to ease up and focusing on having fun more these days. :) Can’t wait to play these Minute to Win It games with my kiddos!

My competitive spirit is definitely all in good fun. I get more concerned about everyone else having fun that I don’t even care who wins…my kids and husband get a little more cutting edge than I do…they take winning pretty seriously.

I am a very sore loser. I am so competitive that it scares me and embarrasses me. To be honest, I avoid games of any kind like the plague because I don’t like the personality traits they bring out in me! Seriously!

Leave a Reply

Be Social

Bonjour! No I'm not French, it just sounded fancy. Sorry for the confusion. I'm Suzanne, a 36-year-old mom, photographer, Navy wife, blogger, baker, and amateur at pretty much everything else. The stars of the show are Evan, born 4/5/09, Caroline, born 12/19/2010 and Lincoln, born 7/23/2014. The last bebeh is Finnegan, born 8/30/2016 so he's a toddler now but don't talk to me about that. We live in Connecticut and enjoy it very much except for most of February and March. You can find more of my photos (or even hire me!) over on my photography site, Ginger Snaps Pictures. I love hearing from you so if you have questions, stories or ideas to share, email me at bebehblog@gmail.com .

Affiliate disclosure: some of my posts contain links which may be affiliate links. That means I get Diet Coke money if you happen to like something I mention enough to buy it. I appreciate it!